Electronic Voting Machines Will Soon Be Replaced With Something That'll Make Voters More Powerful

“The transformation in technology that we have seen in 50 years is more than what world saw in preceding 10,000 years,” said Arnold Toynbee in his book 'Mankind and Mother Earth'.Narendra Modi, on 18th March 2007 at India Today Conclave, slightly changed the statement and said: “The transformation in technology that we have seen in 20 years is more than what world saw in preceding 200 years.”The technology is growing rapidly and the proper use of technology is sure to make the world a better place to live.It is also interesting to note that the political class, which must lead the country is actually attempting to turn the people away from technology as is evident from the recent debate initiated by Mayawati followed by Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee, who have questioned the EVM machines and blamed them for the recent poll debacle. Considering the fact, they have questioned EVM; they are asking Election Commission (EC) to revert to Paper Ballot. Nobody is stating how the paper ballot is better than EVM.

Advancement in voting technology

Mobile voting is several generations advanced technology over EVMs (eVoting) and paper ballot. EMV with VVPT, EVM with the internet, Internet voting (iVoting) were technologies in between. Right2Vote Infotech Private Limited has built the most advanced and 'made for India' Mobile Verified Voting Platform. The platform uses Aadhaar for verification. This is India's opportunity to leap-frog directly from EVMs to Mobile Voting.

Advantages of mVoting

1. mVoting completely eliminates the need for setting up booths across the country.2. A voter can vote from anywhere directly from his mobile.3. This is very useful specially for NRIs, in-country migrants, college students, traveling professionals, married females and others who are located at a place other than their city of registration.4. This will ensure much higher voter turnout. As per estimates, the voting percentage would increase from around 66% today to around 95% with mVoting.5. Aadhaar based mVerification (Mobile Verification) ensures better verification without any human intervention.6. Aadhaar also provides a universal government database and eliminates the requirement of each central and state Election Commission to maintain their voter database.7. It also eliminates the requirement from a citizen to register separately for voter ID card.

Efficiency

Currently, Government of India spends more than Rs 35000 crore for the Lok Sabha election. A major part of the cost is for setting up around 9,30,000 voting booths across the country. A huge cost is involved in renting booths, manning it with election workers, logistics of EVMs and personnel, etc.With mVoting, Election Commission need not invest in any physical infrastructure. A voter would be using his mobile for voting. The whole process would cost less than Rs 1000 crore, which means a saving of Rs 34,000 crore. Just imagine what all can be achieved with this Rs 34,000 crore.

Effectiveness

Currently, the Lok Sabha election is conducted over a period of 2 months. This is due to the logistical challenge, manpower requirement, security requirement and other such challenge enumerating due to the size of the country.With mVoting, the whole election process can be completed in just a single day. Counting is automatic and real time. Currently, around one crore people are deployed to manage the Lok Sabha election. With mVoting, all the process from verification to counting will be automatic and will not require any human intervention. The Lok Sabha election can be managed with less than 100 people.Right2Vote has built a 'made for India' patented audit trail feature along with a secret ballot. This has been achieved with a smart use of encryption and Aadhaar. This would solve the biggest problem of any election where the loser blames the system for his loss. An audit trail is not possible in current systems like paper ballot and EVMs.

Conclusion

Mobile Voting is a no-brainer. It's like replacing the Postal department with Email service. Some people would resist change in the name of hacking or coercion but these concerns are unfounded. Many critical systems like the stock market, the banking system, Air traffic control, electricity grid systems are all connected to internet and hacking can create much bigger damage there concerning the human life. However, enough technologies exist to protect against such misadventure and limit the possible harm. Mobile Voting is the natural progression for our democratic system, and it's high time our Election Commission adopts it. India is the only country to have built a sophisticated digital database like Aadhaar and hence can lead the mVoting revolution. Right2Vote's mobile verified voting platform is Made for India technology, which has been created keeping in mind all the challenges unique to this vast and diverse country. Right2Vote has received several awards including from IIT Bombay and IIM Calcutta for this innovative platform. With this platform, the biggest democracy in the world has the opportunity to become the most efficient and effective democracy in the world.(ANI-BusinessWireIndia)Huge thanks to Mr. Ritesh Shukla for sharing the content.